Skip Beat!

Skip Beat! is a manga created and illustrated by Yoshiki Nakamura. It was published on February 15, 2002 in Hana to Yume and is still on going. An anime adaptation was animated by Hal Film Maker and directed by Kiyoko Sayama. It aired from October 5, 2008 to March 29, 2009 in TV Tokyo.

Skip Beat! Plot:
Skip beat is about a normal, sixteen year old girl named Mogami Kyoko. As a child, she worked in the Shotaro family inn working and learned a lot about dealing and serving customers. Shotaro didn’t want to take over his family’s inn and moved to Tokyo to become a pop star being Kyoko along with him. Kyoko leaves her high school life and works several odd jobs to support Shotaro (who is later named Fuwa Sho). Sho becomes so famous that he ranks seventh as most popular male personality.

When Kyoko was doing a delivery for Sho one day, she overhears Sho insulting her to his manager admitting that she’s only a normal girl and is only using her to support his lifestyle and starts to flirt with his manager. Kyoko gets so mad that she throws food at him and declares that she will get her revenge on Sho. She tells Kyoko that the only way she can do that is by becoming a bigger celebrity than him. Kyoko sells all her things and changes her appearance to join a talent agency where she meets different people and somehow applies the knowledge she learned as a child to become an amazing actress. She then shows that she is no longer the caring, boring girl but a very spiteful woman whose only goal is to destroy Fuwa Sho. Along her quest for revenge, Kyoko meets Fuwa Sho’s sworn enemy, Tsuruga Ren, who disapproves of her motives to become an actress but later develops feelings for her. As Kyoko learns more about acting and the people behind the scenes, she discovers her passion and talent for acting and slowly forgets about her quest to destroy Fuwa Sho.

Skip Beat! Characters:

Mogami Kyoko – Kyoko is a 16 year old girl driven by her hatred for the celebrity, Fuwa Sho, for using her love for him as a stepping stone to his success. She stopped high school and any successful future to follow him to Tokyo and work odd jobs just to feed him. When Kyoko overhears Sho admit that he was only using her, she swears her revenge. She sells all the things she owns to give her a total makeover and joins another talent agency to become more famous than Sho. She becomes the first member of the experimental Love Me department.

Tsuruga Ren – Ren is very successful actor who has the reputation of never needing more than one take to complete a scene. Even though many women swoon over him, he is clueless about love and women. He never shows any expression to others except a gentle smile but expresses his feelings towards a chicken costume not knowing that Kyoko is in it. He doesn’t support Kyoko’s motive for getting into show business but acknowledges her natural talent for acting. As the series goes on, he develops feelings for Kyoko. Unknowingly to Kyoko, he was the boy she met in the river and gave her “corn”

Fuwa Sho – Sho is the childhood friend of Kyoko. His family owns the inn where Kyoko worked as a child. Refusing to take over his family’s inn, he asks Kyoko to run away with him to Tokyo to help him become a pop star but only used her to support his lifestyle. After Kyoko becomes an established actress, he discovers that he had more feelings for her than he first thought.

Kanae Kotonami – Kanae (Moko) starts off as hating Kyoko for making it so far during the auditions. She’s an extremely talented actress whose talent is that of top actors. Even though she shows her amazing skill during the audition, the judges decide to develop her because she lacks love in her acting. She becomes the second member of the experimental Love Me department and becomes Kyoko’s best friend.